Last updated on
Reviewed by Steph Leung
Stackfix Product & Operations Lead
Comparing the two HRIS's, Factorial emerges as the more robust solution overall with superior workflow automation, performance management, and integration capabilities. In contrast, while Breathe offers superior learning and development features through its native course library, it falls short in most other critical areas.
Factorial is better suited for growing companies requiring sophisticated HR processes, while Breathe can be considered for teams wanting rich functionality at a low cost.
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Advantages of Breathe
Advantages of Factorial
With an SQL editor for custom reports and extensive workflow customization options, Factorial offers much deeper customization capabilities than Breathe, which has significant limitations when it comes to customising workflows. This is particularly valuable for growing companies that need to adapt their HR processes as they scale.
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Breathe
Factorial
.png%2Fpublic&w=640&q=75) Breathe Starting at $24.18Converted from GBP Billed monthly |  Factorial Starting at $7.25Converted from GBP employee / month Billed monthly |
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| Stackfix Verdict | ||
|---|---|---|
| Functionality | 5 <p>While Breathe appears to offer a wide range of features on paper, including core HR, performance management, an integrated ATS, and learning & development, much of this functionality feels half-baked and unintuitive.</p><p>For example, the "performance review" module merely allows you to attach an appraisal to an employee's profile, offering no capability to create a company-wide performance review cycle with pre-set questions. </p> | 7 <p>Factorial offers most functionality that most SMBs will need. Besides core HR functionality (store employee info, managing time off), Factorial also allows you to run performance reviews, manage employee shifts, manage expenses, automate workflows and recruit with a native applicant tracking system.</p><p>Features we found missing are payroll, app/ device management. Factorial also gets a point deducted because a lot of its modules seem half-baked.</p> |
| Ease of Use | 3 <p>We found some aspects of Breathe's platform bizarrely unintuitive. For example, viewing the company's time-off calendar requires you to go into the "reports" section. Instead of creating performance reviews for groups of employees, you can only add performance reviews to each employee one-by-one. Furthermore, there are no separate tabs for onboarding and goals - these are all hidden away under a single “company” tab.</p> | 5 <p>Due to Factorial's rich functionality, it will take an average SMB employee at least 1-2 days to master key functionalities of the product.</p><p>Some key workflows, such as syncing your calendar to reflect time-off, and using Factorials' workflow builder to automate workflows can also be complex and unintuitive.</p> |
| Look and feel | 4 <p>The homepage of Breathe features a modern design, creating a strong first impression. However, as users navigate deeper into the platform, the design becomes less consistent with the initial modern aesthetic, and the layout feels cluttered with information.</p><p>Load times are efficient, averaging under 2 seconds.</p> | 7 <p>We find Factorial's clean and modern interface visually acceptable. It also has acceptable page load times.</p> |
| Customisability | 3 <p>Breathe offers very limited customizability across its modules, which can be a significant drawback for many teams. For instance, users can only create 3 text fields and 2 date fields as custom fields. When setting up a leave policy, there is no option to specify which group of employees the policy applies to.</p><p>Additionally, in the workflows module, customization is restricted to renaming tasks, with no flexibility to tailor the workflows further.</p> | 8 <p>You can customise most things on Factorial, from data fields, reports, leave policies, workflows and more. One of the standout strengths here is that it offers an SQL editor for creating highly customised reports.</p><p>However, it lacks the deeper customisability offered by more mature HRIS (e.g. Rippling, HiBob), such as creating workflows with conditional logic.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 9 <p>Breathe offers a self-serve free trial which doesn't require you to talk to sales in order to gain access. Purchasing doesn't require talking to sales. Due to Breathe' very limited customisability, fully customizing the platform can be done within 1-2 business days.</p> | 5 <p>Factorial offers a free trial but requires you to talk to sales first (one round of talking to sales). It takes 10-30mins to complete basic set up (entering company information and adding employees). Fully customizing and setting up the platform takes approximately 1 week and is simple enough do without assistance from an expert; more complicated processes can be done with help from the help center.</p> |
| Customer Support | 3 <p>Users have access to help center with articles explaining the features available on the platform. Breathe also has a built-in AI chatbot, however, we found this chatbot to be quite useless. It answers queries by referring users to the help center. Furthermore, wait times for a human agent is a couple hours and only during UK office hours.</p> | 6 <p>Factorial only seems to offers support via phone call/ a ticket form during European business hours. Users we've interviewed also mentioned that although Factorial's Help Centre is low quality, the support from their Account Managers has been great.</p> |
| Integratability | 4 <p>Breathe lacks a lot of basic integrations such as Slack. However, they do provide an API.</p> | 6 <p>Factorial supports 50+ pre built integrations with most relevant 3rd party products in relevant categories, such as ATS, performance management, finance, benefits and more. It also has an API for custom integrations.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 5 <p>Breathe's exporting functionality is standard with users being able to export most data within the platform from reports to employee information.</p> | 8 <p>Exports of key data are available via self-serve, and most other data are available via self-serve or their API. </p> |
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